I finished GTA 3 for the first time last week and wanna blab about it for a bit. I grew up playing a tonnnneeeeeee of GTA 2 on PC, a little bit of Vice City and 3 (mostly rampaging) on like a cousin's or friend's brother's PS2, then played San Andreas to death on my Xbox. I have 100%ed San Andreas twice on that Xbox (saved over original and had the basketball glitch anyway), and probably put in a few hundred hours on SAMP since then XD. Haven't played 4 or 5's story (just online) but I've seen enough gameplay to 'get' them. None of this is really important, I just wanted to explain where my perspectives come from.
3 is a pretty unique entry, I thought it was going to be a lot like Vice City and San Andreas, but it actually has waaayyy more elements of 1-2 still in it. It's a lot more silly, comicy, and gamey than the later games, in multiple ways. Visually the characters have exagerrated comic-style features which I had forgotten about. I think from just playing much more of Vice City and San Andreas, I assumed all the 3D era GTAs had the same early 00s 'realistic' Renderware look, but coming back to 3 surprised me. It's slight, like an oversized head, facial features, or limbs, so it's hard to notice in passing, but I think the character models reflect the comic box-art and menu screen styles far more than the later games. It's nothing major, but it's clearly a choice from he devs at DMA/R* North, which I read as they maybe wanted it to feel 'unreal' and maintain some of the unserious-ness of the earlier games. I don't know if this choice was artistic or marketing related, or maybe a bit of both. Like, artistically it's more in line with the previous GTAs, making a uniquely unreal looking world (2 has a retro-futuristic setting), with character models/sprites looking very arcadey. Which from a marketing point of view might lessen some of the backlash related to their depictions of extreme violence and crime (like a 'it just a silly game, look at it' argument). This weirdly doesn't apply to the player character (Claude) though, he is realistically proportioned which feels like a move towards immersion and away from everything I just explained. Also, because I never really played the missions as a kid, I mostly remember what Claude looks like, and applied that to the rest of the character models in my head, which is probably why GTA 3 looks even more busted than the others in the 'Definitive Edition'. These kind of not quite conflicting, but polarising choices keep cropping up throughout the game. The gangs are a good example of this too; they all could/do exist in real life (Mafia, Triads, Yardies, etc.) which leans towards immersion, but then they have gang specific named cars (Mafia Sentinel, Cartel Cruiser, Hoods Rumpo) and uniforms which leans way more unrealistic and Warriors-esque, and are definining features of GTA 2. I think I noticed this stuff more because I've played 2 and San Andreas the most, which represent clear and very separate artistic and gameplay visions, where 3 just kept bouncing back and forth between them.
Gameplay-wise 3 is a lot more punishing than the newer games, in a style that's very of it's time and arcade influenced (you die more = more money in the machine). It's weird that arcade gameplay elements carried over to machines you pay for once, but that's more of a cultural convention within games development ("we always did it this way") than a practical thing. But yeah, no mission-redos, trip-skips, checkpoints, or phone call teleports, you just fail and have to drive back from wherever you last saved or the closest police/ambulance drop off. The difficulty in some of the missions was also wild, so many where you scrape by with seconds left on a timer, and a bunch where enemies have almost one-shot-kill weapons or you spawn surrounded by them. Some of these had me so frustrated XD, but you know 'harder journey to reward makes better feeling reward', or whatever. There was also a lot less guidance and direction during missions than the later entries, which had me 50/50 like "oh yay I can do this my way" or "hey game, wtf am I supposed to do here". I think this is more of an era of release thing, games were less accessible and intuitive around then, and you often relied on guides and walkthroughs online or in print. I originally wanted to 100% this game because I remember that not being too hard on San Andreas, but I didn't do the emergency vehicle side-missions before making the Mafia hostile. This makes driving through a large portion of the east island basically impossible, the Mafia's guys carry shotguns that two shot vehicles, you are just driving and then you explode XD. The rest of the map is not too bad for these side-missions, but theres no point doing them if you can't complete the whole thing (including the east island specific ones). Even the ambulance missions (which need 12 levels completed in a row) were impossible for me, that thing tips so easily and you can't repair it after crashes in a pay'n'spray. That coupled with the quietest island (the west one) having the most convoluted street layout AND you don't get a pause screen map view, just made me give up, lmao. The road system felt genuinely complicated, large, and realistic, which I was not expecting as the map is smaller than the latter 3D era games. Wrong turns really made me get lost at times and having no pause-screen map also forces you to actually learn the street layout more, and remember where important stuff is (pay'n'spray, ammunation). This honestly added to the immersion a fair bit.
The story feels a bit more serious than GTA 1-2, but nowhere near as 'serious' as the latter entries. 'Serious' is used very loosely here as GTA is a deeply unserious series, despite what they might try and portray these days. I personally feel that they think their stories are really good, but they usually just feel like a movie plot copypasta (Vice City is just Scarface fanfic, at least San Andreas did story beyond the central Boyz n the Hood/Menace II Society setup). Claude I feel is an abscence of a character, and more a tool for immersion. Like I mentioned before, he is realistically proportioned unlike many other comic-style characters, and he is dressed quite casually. I think he is meant to blend in/fade away in your mind as you project yourself into his role, and become the person doing what he is doing. He famously doesn't speak, and he also doesn't really have or make plans at all. The story just kind of happens to him and around him, and you're not meant to really question that. Not to 'uwu smol bean'-ify Claude, he starts the game in a prison truck, and murders hundreds of people for little to no reason throughout the game, including people he was loyal too. Like, killing Kenji just because a random businessman asked him to was a dog act XD, at least killing the Don made sense for revenge. Something I did like about the story, maybe just because it's less common now, is that it isn't really a happy 'everything is better' now ending. The city didn't change, if anything it got worse, and theres more parts of it that you can't travel around safely. You make five of the city's seven gangs hostile enough to shoot you on sight. You defeat the 'big bad' in destroying the Cartel's SPANK supply and killing (or being adjacent to the killing of) their two leaders, but you didn't harm their ability to produce the stuff and import it again through other means. Apart from wiping out the one Hoods set (who weren't hostile to you at all), there is no change in gang territory apart from introducing the Yakuza to Fort Staunton where they endlessly fight the Cartel who were already there. You don't end the game controlling the city from a mansion, safe to walk the streets like most of the later entries. It kind of reminds me of 'low fantasy' vs 'high fantasy', where low focuses on the day to day lives of regular people in an unreal world, instead of the big hero that saves everyone and gets highly compensated. I like things not being totally resolved in a game lore, and exploring different ways of existing adds to the world building, even if the world is meant to be mostly like ours.
The last things I want to touch on are the vibes and the music. There were a lot of little things added to GTA 3's Liberty City to create it's look and feel that weren't repeated in later entries. It is overwhelmingly grey, both in colour pallete of the city/buildings/infrastructure/rivers, and with the frequent fog, rain, and steam rising from vents. It gives such a murky urban feeling everywhere you go on the map, which is also added to with the newspaper trash floting around everywhere (even on the airport runways). Also, I don't know if it's intentional or a hardware limitation but some of the city lights, especially in cutscenes, look like they are being viewed with astigmatism (like blurry and almost doubled). While I have astigmatism, afaik it doesn't apply here because the TV/Monitor is the light source, not the game, and I swear I've seen other people point this out! lmao. I've raved about the music in GTA 1 and 2 before, all original tracks of great quality by DMA/R* North's in house music team, that feel like genuine commercial music of the time ('97 & '99). 3 does similar, with most of the radio music being original, but introducing some licensed stuff that the latter games are better known for. The original stuff is again SO GOOD, a great approximation of radio music in 2001. Every station has bangers, I found myself listening to Rise FM (trance/house), MSX FM (jungle/dnb), and Game FM(east-coast hip hop/rap) the most, but also loved Flashback, Lips, and Head. I lost my mind when I first heard the theme song for GTA 1 (Grand Theft Auto by 'Da Shootaz') play on Lips, which I think it another funny example of the real/unreal thing I mentioned before. It seems like a tall task to write a song called 'the name of the game series', with lyrics about stealing cars and dealing with gangs (things you do in the game), that genuinely sounds like a commercial radio song. Often attempts at game songs like that end up sounding very forced and clumsy to me. I'll leave you with an experience that defined the whole game for me, and which draws in elements of most stuff I have blabbed about here.
After working through the Mafia's missions for some time, you get sent to some random spot again that seems normal. A pager message comes from Maria telling you it's a trap and to pick her up, you then head to a pier and flee the east island for the central one. Maria explains the Don turned on you after she said to him you two were 'an item' (story happening to/around Claude again). You meet Asuka, one of the Yakuza's co-leaders, and she asks you to kill the Don to prove your loyalty (to a gang you just met? but are offering you refuge). The mission lays out that the Don will be arriving at Sex Club Seven (funniest name ever) in '3 hours' that translates to 3 minutes real time. 3 minutes to race from the central island to the east island, across the one nearby bridge that you have never crossed in the game yet, to then position yourself able to kill Don Salvatore. The leader of the gang that took you in after the opening cutscene prison truck breakout which temporarily destroyed the very bridge you will cross to murder him. You step outside, to your left is the river dividing the islands, grey and obscured by fog, on your right is a Yakuza Stinger; a gang-specific model of a fast sports car. It begins to rain as you hop into the car, Rise FM is on, and you start driving. The Stinger is the best handling car you've come across so far, it's fast, takes handbrake turns well without tailspinning. Arguably the best song in the whole game comes on 'Slyder - Score', the DJ yells "STAYING UP FOREVER... WITH RISE", followed by the howling vocalisations of the song and the beat that keeps building and building in tension as you get closer and closer to confronting the Don. The feeling of that moment was the absolute peak of this game for me, then I got there and died near immediately and had to repeat this mission like 12 times. GTA 3's punishing side came back up; you can't stand too close or too far away from the club, and you need armour and preferrably a sniper rifle, none of which is explained well at all, lmao. Fun experience, probably not for everyone.
I was lucky enough to play this on a port of the PS2 version to PS4, that seems to be totally original and not the mobile-to-console port from the 360/PS3 era. As far as I'm aware, this version is delisted from the playstation store, it was just already installed on my friend's PS4 that he gave to me. You also can not play the original Xbox version on latter generation consoles (only the mobile port or the 'definitive' edition). It's easy enough to find/rip on PC, and add the quality of life improving 'SilentPatch'. My thoughts on the definitive editions are below in this dogshit meme I edited:
Thanks for reading this very long thing!